techniques have also been proposed for the
determination of paracetamol in analgesic
products [16].
Spectrofluorimetric methods with lower detection
limits have been proposed for the determination
of paracetamol in binary or ternary
mixtures of drugs in pharmaceutical formulations
[17 21]. Because paracetamol is not a
ttuorescent species, it can be determined indirectly
using Ce(IV) [17] as an oxidizing reagent
and measuring the relative fluorescence intensity
of Ce(III) arising from Ce(IV). Direct spectrofluorimetric
determinations of paracetamol
require a previous and adequate derivatization
step. Reagents such as fluorescamine and dansyl
chloride have been proposed [18,19] but
both reactions show low selectivity. 1-Nitroso-
2-naphthol [20] and potassium hexacyanoferrate(Ill)
[21] have been proposed as oxidizing
reagents, since an adequate oxidation of paracetamol
produces fluorogenic species suitable
for its determination.
In this paper, an easier and quite sensitive
spectrofluorimetric method is proposed for the
determination of paracetamol, whereby sodium